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When America Folded, Ukraine started winning.
Here is a thing Donald Trump would prefer you not think about too hard. While he was busy explaining to anyone within earshot that he alone could end the war in 72 hours, Ukraine quietly went and built one of the most effective asymmetric military machines in modern history. Without Washington’s weapons. And, increasingly, without Washington full stop.
The Americans, you will recall, did eventually provide assistance. It arrived wrapped in so many restrictions it resembled a loan application from a particularly suspicious bank manager. Certain weapons could not be used against certain targets. Certain distances were off-limits. Certain conversations were not to be had. It was, in the generous assessment of military historians, a contribution. In the less generous assessment, it was a geopolitical participation trophy.
Then Washington stopped showing up altogether.
Ukrainian forces have quietly recaptured hundreds of square kilometers in the Zaporizhzhia sector, surpassing the territorial gains of the much-publicized 2023 counteroffensive  and deliberately said nothing about it, having learned that triumphant press conferences tend to end in embarrassment. Meanwhile, Ukraine regained the initiative in the world’s first full-scale drone war by launching a campaign of mid-range strikes designed to systematically dismantle the logistics of Putin’s invasion, targeting military warehouses, command posts, transport hubs, and air defense systems across the Russian rear.
The numbers are extraordinary. By January to March 2026, the pace of Ukrainian drone attacks had effectively doubled, with 100 to 200 unmanned aircraft crossing into Russian airspace every single night. Russia’s own Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu admitted in March that not a single region in Russia could consider itself safe, and that the Ural region, once completely unreachable, was now firmly in the zone of constant threat. 
Europe, for its part, did what Washington said it could never do without American leadership. EU military aid rose 67 percent in 2025, and the UK and Germany assumed co-leadership of weapons coordination after the US quietly stopped attending.  Last week, Brussels approved a 90-billion-euro loan package to fund Ukraine’s military and economic needs through 2027. 
And Russia? CSIS documents nearly 415,000 Russian battlefield casualties in 2025 alone, with Russian advance rates of between 15 and 70 meters per day, slower, the analysts note with some satisfaction, than virtually any major offensive campaign recorded in the past century.
Trump calls this a stalemate. Putin calls it progress. The Ukrainians call it Tuesday.
Gandalv / @Microinteracti1
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